Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll look at the trial of guards involved in a fatal prison beating that was caught on video.
The footage, taken from body cameras worn by New York State prison officers who didn’t know the devices were running, was shocking.
Officers are seen assaulting Robert Brooks, a 43-year-old inmate, in a prison infirmary, punching and kicking him in the groin and chest while he is handcuffed and shackled. One officer uses a booted foot to kick Brooks, and then forces him onto his back on an examination table as another officer punches Brooks in the upper body.
Brooks, his face bloodied, is not shown doing anything to provoke or resist the attack, which happened late on Dec. 9 at the Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Several officers appear to be the main aggressors. Others walk in and out of view, chatting and watching their colleagues treat Brooks like a rag doll. No one tries to stop the assault.
Brooks was declared dead the next day.
That such brutality had been captured on video was highly unusual, and its release offered the public an extreme glimpse of what prison reform activists have long said are the violent conditions under which those held in New York’s 42 penitentiaries often live. Here, these advocates said, was a chance for true accountability.
And the video’s existence did set the stage for criminal charges, including murder and manslaughter, to be filed against 10 officers. Six pleaded guilty, including five to manslaughter charges, and admitted their roles in the killing. Several agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Four opted to go to trial.
Three of the four — David Kingsley, Mathew Galliher and Nicholas Kieffer — went on trial this month in Utica, N.Y., on second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter charges. They face up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted. (The other officer is set to go on trial in January.)
After roughly three days of deliberations, my colleagues Corey Kilgannon and Wesley Parnell report, a jury found Kingsley guilty of murder yesterday and acquitted Galliher and Kieffer.
As the verdicts were read, gasps and cries could be heard in the courtroom, and one defendant’s relatives broke down in tears. Kieffer and Galliher hugged each other. Kieffer thanked the jury and expressed remorse to Brooks’s family. “What happened to them is not something that a family should go through,” he said.
His lawyer, David Longeretta, said the acquittals showed that “there is no gang mentality” at the Marcy prison. At trial, he had sought to portray Brooks as a violent criminal rather than an innocent victim and, like his fellow defense lawyers, had blamed shoddy training and poor supervision by the men’s superiors for the deadly attack.
Despite Kingsley’s conviction — he will now be locked up in a system he once patrolled — Kilgannon and Parnell write that “the outcome confounded those observers who had considered the case against all three officers nearly airtight,” given the body-camera video.
The disappointment was deep-seated.
“Even when you can see the evidence on video of people carrying out this kind of brutality, it clearly doesn’t mean that accountability is inevitable,” said Jennifer Scaife, the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a state-sanctioned watchdog group that inspects and reports on the state’s prisons.
Brooks’s relatives welcomed Kingsley’s conviction, saying in a statement that the jury had made the “right decision” in finding him guilty of murder. But they added that “it was hard to see Matthew Galliher and Nicholas Kieffer be given a pass” and that the split verdict highlighted a “need for systemic change.”
“The guards indicted in this case were not a few bad apples,” Brooks’s family continued. “They were part of a rotten system, doing what state officials have allowed them to do.”
In February, a few days before the charges in the case were announced, the state prison system was plunged into another crisis when officers walked off the job at several prisons in what became a series of wildcat strikes that spread to virtually the entire system.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had labeled Brooks’s death “murder” even before an autopsy was publicly released, and moved quickly to fire those implicated in the killing, sent the National Guard in to patrol the prisons and eventually fired hundreds of officers who participated in the strikes. Months later, the strikes’ impact is still being felt.
Hochul, a Democrat, said in a statement yesterday that she was “disappointed by the acquittals” but “deeply committed to the changes we are making to ensure that New York State’s correctional facilities are safe for all who enter — employees, the incarcerated, visitors and volunteers alike.”
Weather
Expect a sunny sky with temperatures reaching the high 60s. In the evening there will be a chance of showers, with temperatures dropping into the mid-50s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect today.
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METROPOLITAN diary
An Empty Car
Dear Diary:
My boyfriend and I were headed home from a long, wildly exciting Brooklyn Cyclones game late on a beautiful summer Tuesday.
Still riding high from the home run that had ended the game, we walked toward the back of an F train that was waiting to depart from the Stillwell Avenue station. We sat down in an empty car, ready for a long and uneventful journey back to Manhattan.
Expecting more passengers to join us at the next stop, we skipped up and down the empty car while we had it to ourselves.
But no one got on at the next stop. Or the next. Or the next.
Our antics got sillier with each passing stop. I busted out my rusty ballet moves and swung from a pole in a mediocre impersonation of a Showtime performer. My boyfriend sang show tunes at the top of his lungs. We ran up and down the car and spun each other around the aisle.
Each time the next stop was announced, we rushed back to our seats with a giggle, ready to pretend that we had been sitting still the whole time.
And each time after the doors closed with the car still empty, we leaped up to start all over again.
By the time someone finally did get on, we were dripping with sweat and drenched in joy. Thirteen stops had come and gone.
— Anna Driscoll
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. — E.S.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Hannah Fidelman and Steven Moity contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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Ed Shanahan is a rewrite reporter and editor covering breaking news and general assignments on the Metro desk.
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